And it’s great. It has terrific photographs of cows and pigs and horses and even a big red tractor. Just the kinds of farm paraphernalia that I would want introduced to my seventeen-month old.

And then I came upon this page:

The combine harvester?

In a book entitled MY FIRST FARM BOARD BOOK?

Really? The authors of this book decided to go with a combine harvester, piece of farm machinery that my wife and I had never seen in our lives?

The combine harvester?

Then just as I was getting ready to write this post, I stumbled upon the world’s first bionic cat, which just happened to lose his legs to a combine harvester in the British Channel Isles last year.

A combine harvester! Can you believe it?

I nearly fell out of my chair when I read the words combine harvester in the news report. It was as if universe looked over at me, closed one eye and offered up one massive, cosmic wink in my direction.

The combine harvester. Perhaps I was wrong after all.

Good call MY FIRST FARM BOARD BOOK. I guess the combine harvester is more ubiquitous than I first thought.